Obtaining telephone service at a remote location without cellular or landline phone service, such as onboard an aircraft, a train, a bus, or a ship, is expensive and rare. As used herein, remote location refers to either a fixed or a mobile remote location. Such service is expensive and rare because of a lack of available bandwidth and adequate technical infrastructure at the remote location. Additionally, such infrastructure is typically only accessible using limited types of interfaces.
Generally, present systems at, or onboard, remote locations use an infrastructure that provides telephone service similar to using a regular landline phone. Typically, an onboard communication network, or infrastructure, utilizes radio frequency (RF) communication streams to allow calls to be transmitted between the remote location and a base station connected to a landline phone system. Additionally, onboard users located at, or onboard, the remote location are restricted to utilizing onboard handsets to interface to with the onboard network.
Furthermore, typical onboard systems are limited in the amount of accessible bandwidth and lack flexibility of use. For example, due to the limited amount of bandwidth available to the system, typical onboard systems must restrict the number of onboard users that can simultaneously utilize the system to communicate to with the base station. Additionally, typical onboard systems do not allow onboard users to connect to the system using smart devices operable for two-way voice communication, such as cell phones, lap top computers, and personal data assistants (PDA's).
Further yet, typical onboard systems are not well suited to allow communications between a plurality of onboard users, or to allow incoming calls to an onboard user from a person not located at the remote location. Even further, the infrastructure of typical systems can not be used for other types of data transmission without significant modification. Such limitations of typical onboard systems make them complicated, difficult, and expensive to install and utilize.
Therefore, it is desirable to develop a wireless voice communication system for a remote location, where traditional landline and cellular type services are not available, that is more flexible and less expensive to use than present systems, and can be implemented utilizing existing infrastructure.